BEIJING -- "Is that all? Show me recipes for a whole month."
Dissatisfied by a thin pad of prescriptions offered by an employee at a west Beijing chemist's, Wang Zhexiong demanded more to check whether rules were being followed in the selling of medicine containing performance-enhancing substances.
The call of Wang, deputy head of drug safety with China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), is part of China's more aggressive anti-doping efforts ahead of the Olympics.
In the latest move senior officials, including Wang, from the central government were sent to Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and 12 provincial areas for anti-doping inspections. The 12-day campaign is to last till July 7.
The inspectors were dispatched by seven ministry-level government agencies, including drug safety, health and public security watchdogs, and the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG).
Every link, from drug producers and chemical plants to medicine wholesalers and retailers, would be checked through spot checks, both announced and covert.
"We must ensure nothing goes wrong with any of these links, especially over the counters," said Wang. "So that as few chances as possible are left for doping drug misuse, unintentional or intentional, by athletes."
SAFETY NET
By May 1, the Chinese capital had tagged nearly 100 percent of all drugs containing performance-enhancing substances to remind athletes to be cautious when buying such medicine, up from 64 percent at the beginning of April, said Deputy Director Cong Luoluo with the Beijing Drug Administration.
For a large part of those medicines, prescriptions by doctors are demanded on purchase. Drug shop assistants are trained to handle the rest with caution.
"We have to examine the authenticity of the prescriptions and make sure the dosage is reasonable, too," said Liu Jian, an employee at a north Beijing outlet of the chain retailer Deweizhi. "We are told to remind customers when we're selling them medicine with banned substances for athletes."
Nearly 70 percent of the 271 varieties of medicine with performance-enhancing substances require recipes in the outlet and are placed on separated shelves marked with green and blue lines.
"Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers have basically reached the requirements for doping control," the SFDA's deputy chief Wu Zhen told press last month.
He made the remarks after a nationwide campaign, which began last year, had punished 148 companies and 321 websites for illegal production or trading of doping agents.
Fines were meted out for some, licenses were revoked for others and imprisonment was handed down in the most serious cases. Both open and covert inspections were conducted in six Olympic host cities.
